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Philip G. Altbach

Philip G. Altbach is Monan University Professor and director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College. He is author and editor of many books on higher education themes including most recently, Leadership for World-class Universities: Challenges for Developing Countries (Routledge, 2010). He has been Distinguished Scholar Leader of the Fulbright New Century Scholars. His research focuses on research universities, developing countries, the academic profession, and related themes. For more information on Philip Altbach and CIHE visit: www.bc.edu/cihe.

Most Recent Articles

An alarming story from India illustrates the continuing and unending problems monitoring the activities of agents and recruiters working in developing countries for colleges and universities in the United States and elsewhere. The head of the largest international student recruitment company in the Indian state of Punjab was recently arrested on a multiplicity of charges, including embezzlement (of more than $1 million) and forgery.

A conference in Toronto last month focused on higher education and the media. Organized by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and other groups, the event considered how information about higher education is communicated—we don’t often think about how higher education is portrayed to the public and to policymakers, or for that matter even how the academic community learns about what is going on in the ever more complex world of higher education.

In recent months there have been reports from several countries hinting at a trend towards tightening up visa requirements for international students. The notable current examples are Australia and in April, the UK announced the implementation of new restrictions. The United States implemented dramatically new visa restrictions after 9/11 but has since loosened them significantly. Are these restrictions unfair to students or damaging to higher education? In a word, no.

If it were not so serious, it would be laughable. An American ‘sham university’ enrolled more than 1,500 students from India and enabled them to obtain American visas. The fact that they were not studying at the university, nor even residing anywhere near the place, was eventually discovered by US authorities, who started cracking down on the students. The story is reported in the February 2, 2011 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

India faces a severe shortage of teaching staff as it rapidly expands it higher education system. At such top institutions as the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management, the generation of academics who matured with these schools is now retiring and there isn’t another cohort in the pipeline to take their places. Similarly, there are shortages of well-qualified staff in departments as most Indian universities responsible for graduate (post-graduate) degrees.

A few of the world’s research universities have established Institutes of Advanced Study—small, usually interdisciplinary, centers that bring together scholars and researchers from different fields, sponsor fellowships, invite top academics from other universities to campus, and in general provide intellectual ferment to the sponsoring university.